The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-05-15
SEA LORE.
A Dialect With Wealth OF Distinctive
Terms.


wealth of technical dialect than that of the
sea. The vocabulary of the ocean is crowd
ed with strange words, and there are such
nice shades of meaning which distinguish
their uses that landsnan must often be
perplexed at how to arrive at any intelligent
understanding of them. The sage of Fleet
street is never more entertaining than when
he is trying to define some part of the yes
sells gear. At home with pretty much all
other subjects in the world Dr. johnson
was singularly unhappy in his treatment of
matters marine, as glance at some of the
definitions in his dictionary will show. His
description of ship as floating prison is
of course figuratiye, begotten by his dislike
of the sea and everything connected with it.
His dictionary, however is full of ludicrous
errors, perpetrated in all seriousness in his
attempts TO fathom the mystery of ships
equipment. The doctor confounds "tiller'
with "rudder" over and over again. de-
scribes the keel" as the bottom of ship,
and apparently thinks that Delay and
"splicen are convertible terms. This ignor-
Rnce on the photographers part is inexcus-
able for the reason that sea terms have such
nicely of application that room for confu-
sion of them should be impossible No pro-
fession in the world has words to express
such delicate shades of meaning as the sea-
Take the words aft and ''abaftn as exam
pies These are both adverbs of place. and
both mean almost the same thing, yet there
is no single occasion where either of them
may be used with equal propriety The
former means behind in a general sense
but the latter means behind in relative
sense, and can only be used in connection
with some object, abaft the foremost, abaft
the pinnacle. etc. People would naturally
think that the same word would be used to
describe anything which came over or
through vessels bulwar1s. whether that
min
of the sort. There are two words to use on
occasions of this sort, to confound which is
heresy Of the deadIiest kind A boat is
said TO be swung from the davits over the
bulwarks ''inboard,n but man entering
ship has gone aboard" Seas break sin
board" but not marines-the latter come
aboard
Anecdotes Of DR.. johnson are irresistible,
and here is one which is not so frequently
quoted as most. On one occasion the doctor
was invited to spend week on board war
ship lying in Plymouth roads. Rendered
exclusive by enforced idleness, he was tempt
ed into rambling about the ship, and coming
70 a particularly dark and mysterious closet
had his curiosity whetted to ask sailor its
uses That, replied the tar, sis the place
where the loplolyman keeps his loplolly"-
an answer which so Disconnected the doctor
that he packed up his trunks and went
ashore the same hour III the strange words
ne hears at sea are puzzling to a landsman,
then doubly so are familiar words, which on
ship have a significance quite different to
their shore one. What is the unsophisticated
TO make of cats, Of lizards, of foxes or of
leeches Then the use of the verbs to mouse
to house and 10 rouse are equally mysteri-
OIIs. The word lady at sea is obsolete now
but formerly it designated functionary
whose business it was TO look after the gun
ners' small stores, and the place where the
latter were kept was called the lady's pan
try. The sea is very conservative in its
usages, and some OF the terms we have
quoted above were familiar to mariners in
the time of Columbus. Now and then a
word sinks into desIetude, as President
Cleveland would say, but il takes centuries
of disuse 70 really render the word obsolete
A good expressive sea term has been lost in
abandoning the verb ito claw" which for
merly meant clutching and grabbing at the
wind, in ships efforts TO get away from a
lee shore. Sails are not said to ''shiver" in
the wind nowadays; they ''shake;n nor are
the staysails ''heaved out,n but s'loosed and
hoistedn in this nineteenth century. There
has been "A great deal of controversy about
the use of the word ''topgallant, and, as
usual, the sage of Bolton Court runs afoul
of it most egregiously. Topgallant was a
word used on shore long before it became
the exclusive property of the sea. Steele
somewhere speaks of the "topgallant sparks
of the town." using the word with conf.
dence which only familiarity with it could
give According TO the author of the
'Lives of the Poets" ''topgallant' is the
topsail Now, the veriest tyro of the sea
knows that topgallant is never used as
substantive, but Invariably as an adjective
the topgallant yard the topgallant fore
castle furnishing examples. A man goinl
to bed at sea is said to be turning inn MeI
who sleep through the watches, like tn,
petty officers, etc, are said to have ''al
night In" that is, in their hunks or ham
mocks elders" is peculiar word. AM
means those exclusive of the officers who d,
not keep watches, like the carpenter, cook
butcher, etc. The monosyllabic word "lay
has many meanings, none of them ver'
quickly caught hold of by the landsman
To ''lay" aloft is to go aloft, but for bod,
of men 20 lay along a yard is TO extenl
along a yard. The word "layn is also use,
in connection with coiling up a rope; thus
ito bay up rope"
IL would occupy too much space 10 adduc
instances where the spelling and pronuncia
tion OF sea terms are widely different. FIRE
qucntly, of course, this arises from the fac
that Jack has got little breath TO spare anI
wants to say everything as short as possible
But why IL is easier to say ''stroph thai
stfar, or "stIakeH than streak, Is not appa
rent. The word tackle Is short and hand,
enough, in all conscience, but in Jack
month Il becomes "tayce," with the accen
81 the first syllable. Dry hash at sea be
comes "scouse, and buildings on dumping
are known collectively as ''dufs" Ship
crackers are called "har1 bread and baker
loaves soft tack" "Fiddlcs" are peculia
wooden frames strapped on the table to pre-
vent tho dishes from slipping away.
Burying the dead horse Is q ceremony sci
dom witnessed on American ships, but on
the East Indianen Of old time, us well as on
the Blackwell liners OF decade ago, it wa
never omitted from voyage. IL consistet
IN the burying If the efligy Of g horse whei
THO sailors bau been month out at sea, I,
signify that their months advance had beer
worked off. Needless 10 say there was con
siderable Decentralization about It, many
dreary chants being sung, barrel of Ca
ignited and all hands getting gloriousl,
drunk in the evening" Compared with lega
phraseology, that OF the sea is infinitely
richer and purer, and as we have notices
before il is capable Of drawing fine distinc
tons and discriminating between shades o
meaning, 80 as 10 almost raise u 10 science
A little knowledge, however, is dangerou
thine. nnd before the confident lan"<'la'